


is it cool if i hold your hand?

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Fresh Meat (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JP likes Vod and is defensive and dramatic about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	is it cool if i hold your hand?

"How dare you think I could ever like Vod!" is the line JP has rehearsed so many times just in case someone asks. Not that they would; staring at his housemate with his head in his hands and a lopsided smile is a completely ordinary way to act. Right? So, it's just in the small chance the topic ever comes up, that JP practices in his room. 

  
He didn't ever think it would come to this. When they first moved in he actually thought Vod was gay, and he was totally hoping she would hook up with Oregon and let him watch, but when he learned she wasn't he still didn’t give her much thought.  She was cool. One of the lads.   
  
She could be scary, too. One time she grabbed the front of his (very expensive, be careful with it please) coat and threatened to chop off his balls if he ever said a bad word about Howard again. He had promised, he likes his balls thanks very much, but he couldn't stop thinking about Vod thinking about that area of him, of what other, more pleasurable on his side, things she could do.   
  
When JP comes to the conclusion that yeah, _maybe_ he does like Vod, big deal, he lets out a whimper and does a sort of dance in his room because this can never end well. JP is posh (no matter how much he tries to deny it) and fussy and self-centred and Vod is scrappy and proud and self-centred and they are just a handful of reasons why they wouldn't work.   
  
So, gritting his teeth and painting on a smile, JP resolves to keep it his little secret. It's a crush; it'll go away in a week or so. Right? 

 

-

 

  
Kingsley finds out first. Well, it's more like JP screams it in his face one night when he's hijacked him and taken him down the pub. It's a relief, in a way, to have it out in the open. His _thing_. It’s been two months and Vod keeps coming up to him being her usual loud, opinionated self and it just draws JP in further and further.  
  
"Don't exile me from the house, please Kingsley. I am literally begging you!"  
  
"Why would I exile you, again?" Kingsley frowns, bless him.   
  
"For wanting to shag..." JP glances around then leans in close and stage whispers. "Vod."   
  
"Again. Why would I exile you?"   
  
JP sighs. Why are his housemates so difficult? "It's _Vod_." 

“It is.” Kingsley agrees. “Better than Josie, don’t you think?”

“Really?” JP snorts. Josie had been a pretty fantastic shag, he thinks about it in times of trouble and despair. Not as his dad’s funeral, though, which had fitted both categories. At his dad’s funeral Vod had put her arm round him and let him feel her up a bit which makes the whole thing worse, really. He had started his advances whilst _burying his father_.

Kingsley nods, flustered. “Yeah, well, Josie would just shag you then fuck you over and then get all hostile if you ever got a girlfriend. And you’re entitled to a girlfriend, aren’t you? Fucking yes you are.”

“Uh, Kingsley. We were sort of talking about Vod.” JP whispers because this can’t get out but he really wants to fucking talk about it or else he’ll explode.

“Right. Go ahead, then.”

 

-

 

“So...”

“What is it, Howard?”

“So...”

“What?”

“I’ve been hearing things. Interesting things. About you.” Howard says, adjusting his glasses and staring at JP some more.

“Everything about me is interesting, Howard. Get to the point.” JP doesn’t have time for this; Vod said she was going out at nine and JP wanted to be there to see her off? Plead for her not to go to a dance with sleazy old men? Okay, fine, he doesn’t have a valid reason. He just wants to see her, full stop.

“Vod.”

Act cool. Act aloof. Ignorant. Basically, act yourself. “Eh, did you bump your head on one of those rocks you’re always playing with, Howard? I’m JP.”

“No. You see Vod as a  - a female.”

JP snorts. He thinks he comes across as suitably disgusted quite well, actually. He should totally have stuck with those acting classes when he was sixteen, a bit of bullying never hurt anyone. “Don’t be ridiculous. Now, I have to be going –“

“Where you going?”  JP looks up and there she is. “You said you would come with me to this shitty charity thing for whatsisface.”

“I did?” Surely he would have remembered agreeing to go somewhere with Vod. Surely he would have panicked over what to wear to make it look like he wasn’t trying too hard, and surely he would have forced Kingsley to go over what to say with him (Yes, he realises he’s acting like a preteen girl with a crush on that bloody Harry Styles with all the hair). “You sure you haven’t been at the crack again, Vod.”

“It wasn’t ever crack, you idiot.” Vod punches him on the head, then digs her fingers into his hair and twists, surprisingly gentle. “Come on, be a mate. There’ll be free booze...”

JP tilts his head, pretending to consider, but the fingers are still in his hair, winding and pulling; it’s sort of hypnotic, and oh who is he kidding anyway, of course he’s going to jump at the chance for this, for any time outside the house alone with Vod.

“Well if there’s free booze.” He says like that’s the only reason he’s going. Howard snorts from somewhere behind his book.

Obviously, because the universe hates JP (or maybe JP is just too dramatic), the rest of them end up joining JP and Vod at the party (which is shit, anyway. The free booze? Total bullshit.), and behave in their usual embarrassing way so JP hides away in a corner with Oregon (she’s a nice girl but hey, nothing like that) and talks about nothing for an hour and a half.

He’s muttering into the rim of his glass of red wine, something about his father and his absence during his childhood, when Oregon snaps and pulls at his ear so he’s facing her.

“You gonna be like this all night? Because Dylan wants to meet up but you seem kinda pathetic to leave.”

JP waves a hand; everyone else has love, apart from him. “No you go ahead. Go find Dylan, give him a shag from me.”

“Jesus Christ.” She mutters and slides a hesitant arm around his shoulders. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“I’m in love, Oregon.” He declares, taking another gulp of his wine; it might not be free but it’s bloody good. “I have ruined myself for bitter, unrequited love.”

“Oh.”

“I know. A womaniser like me off the market, it’s hard to believe.” It comes out as a wail but he thinks he conveys how much of a player he is – was. Until _her_.

“And it’s ruined you, how?” Oregon asks, sounding too far away from serious for JP’s liking.

“I can’t even look at another girl. They’re not the one I want.” He then, of course, starts humming You’re The One I Want. No wonder Vod doesn’t like him, not with his taste in musicals. “It hurts, Oregon.”

“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.” Oregon sighs, patting him on the shoulder. They’re not an affectionate bunch of people.

“Is he going on about his fucking boner for Vod again?” Kingsley groans as he leads Howard over to them.

“I knew it!”

Oregon gasps, her hand flying to her mouth and her eyes wide. “You’re in love with Vod?!”

“Fuck off, Kingsley.” JP always feels guilty being mean to Howard, and there’s still that threat from Vod at the back of his mind, so he leaves him be. “And, yes. Now leave me alone.”

“Are you in love with her, though?” Kingsley scrunches his nose.

“Yes, Kingsley. I am.”

“But are you?”

“Fuck off.” You can never tell Kingsley to fuck off too much. In fact, every time it’s said a spider dies, so. JP is helping humanity.

Vod comes over then, demanding to know why everyone looks so shifty, and JP buys her a drink because this is gobbiest group of people he’s ever known. Oregon winks when JP leads Vod over to the bar and ugh he needs more wine.

 

-

 

Josie is the last to know, and she’s bitchy about it. But only for a bit.

“I’m always the last to know.”

“ _No one_ was supposed to know.” JP says into his hands in the corner; this whole thing has gotten completely out of hand. So he likes Vod, she’s funny and witty and cool and determined and scary and okay he drunkenly claimed to be in love with her but honestly, why shouldn’t he be? Look at her. But now everyone (apart from Vod. He thinks.) knows and they’re pressuring him about it.

“This is peer pressure, is what it is.”

“How the fuck is it?” Josie asks on behalf of everyone. They’re having a group meeting about it which isn’t ethical or something, it’s not fair, either, it’s not like JP interfered when Josie and Kingsley had their emotional shags and then fucked it up. They shouldn’t be living vicariously through him just because their lives are a mess.

“Because.” Forgive him, he’s not here doing English.

“Why don’t you fuck her? What are you scared of?”

Rejection, if he’s being honest. He’s attractive, he knows that, obviously, but he doesn’t seem Vod’s type. He doesn’t know Vod’s type, actually, probably big tattooed blokes with no hair and no teeth. He’s too posh for her. It’s Romeo and Juliet all over again.

“Thought you were good with the ladies, JP.” Kingsley smirks, and Josie laughs from beside him. “Swimming in clunge, you said.”

“I’m not Jay from The Inbetweeners, Kingsley.” JP says somewhat scathingly. “Just give me a bit of time alright?”

“What, so –“

“If I could make a point...” Howard pipes up, “it’s not exactly wise, is it? Getting intimate with a housemate.” He eyes JP looking surprisingly stern. “When it ends, which it will inevitably, we’ll be ones left to pick up the pieces.”

The rest consider this, think of a heartbroken pathetic JP and a vindictive emotional Vod; agreeing with nods and grimaces of acceptance, of no longer being able to take the piss out of JP if it’ll end in house destruction.

“Thanks for all the support, guys. I really appreciate it.” JP huffs, and then storms out the room.

 

-

 

He goes for it, in the end, mostly because the others don’t want him to and that’s the sort of person he is.

He decides he’s just going to plant one on her; if she punches him then that’s fine and if she wants more then that’s fine too. He’s nervous and terrified but feeling really fucking brave at the same time. He can _do_ this.

It happens after they come in from a night out. Kingsley and Oregon had been singing or whatever it is they do and JP had been forced along for moral support (he actually quite likes their music but he won’t ever tell Kingsley that). They’re all crowded in the hall, shouting praise at the pair and who drank all the fucking milk because Josie wants a drink, and JP just takes in a breath and kisses Vod.

Vod freezes, they all do. JP thinks time might actually have frozen (he’s being dramatic again). And he’s just standing there with his hands dangling at his sides and his lips pressed against Vod’s. But then, just as he’s about to pull back and then run away (probably), Vod kisses back, reaching up to grab JP’s cheeks and pulling him closer to her.

JP thinks he hears Oregon gasp and a fuck that is sort of Welsh sounding and so is probably from Josie, but everything else gets blocked out after that because holy fuck he’s kissing Vod and not getting punched.

Vod shoves her tongue in his mouth and pushes him up against the banister and, well, he goes with it. Holy shit. He’s kissing Vod. _Vod_. And everyone is watching this miraculous thing happen. He has proof it’s not all in his head.

“What the fuck?” Vod says breathlessly once she’s pulled away.

“Uh.” The audience isn’t so good anymore. Kingsley is probably doing that smirk JP hates.

“Is this why you’ve been so weird lately?”

She’s still pressed against him; he can feel her boobs pressing into his chest. “Maybe?”

“You’re a twat, you know that.” Her lipstick, that bright bright red that he has always wondered the taste of (strawberries - not what he was expecting), is smudged. JP did that.

“Yeah?” He braces himself for the punch. Out the corner of his eye he sees them all lean forward.

“Yeah. Why’d you take all this fucking time?”

Oh. “You’re – You’re not mad?”

Vod rolls her eyes. God she’s perfect. “No, you numpty.”

She kisses him again, hard and fast, leaning back again too quickly. When JP tries to chase the kiss she laughs, and then reaches for his hand (“come on”) and leads the way up the stairs.

He can’t stop touching when he’s fucking her, because he _can_ touch now. Maybe not again, maybe not forever, but he can touch now and he’s going to make the fucking most of it. He gets her off first (she must bring the gentleman out in him) and then comes with a groan when she clenches around him, collapsing on top of her and making her squirm and punch him because they’re both all sweaty.

“What the fuck?” Vod says again.

JP could make a witty comment, make a joke of it, but he doesn’t have the energy to, so he leans over and kisses her (see, making the most of it). They don’t cuddle, they don’t talk, they fall asleep on asleep on separate sides (JP’s surprised she stayed at all) and wake up on separate sides and it’s not awkward, and so they do it again and again.

Kingsley remarks on the ridiculousness of the couple (not that they are a couple yet. JP is keeping his fingers crossed, though. Vod hasn’t snogged anyone else in a while which must mean something right?) every single day (Kingsley can fuck off); Oregon thinks it’s cute, very tragic and romantic (JP doesn’t get that); Josie winks at JP every once and a while and doesn’t roll her eyes as much which he takes as a good sign; and Howard. Howard is still worried about what will happen in the end. 


End file.
